Welcome to the first post on our new and improved Atlas update thread! Every Sunday, we’ll be posting a new update to let you know what the dev team has been working on the past week. Since this is our first post since the beginning of the dev period though, we figured we’d start out by filling you in on some of the things we’ve accomplished since October:

AgricultureFor those of you who’ve played on the Survival server, you’ve likely seen Agriculture in action. We’ll be adding dozens of new crops to our roster which will not only be used in new Brewery and Cooking recipes, but will sell to vendors in NPC towns across Atlas! Everything from cotton and tobacco to berries and different kinds of tree fruits.

New (and improved) NPC TownsWe’ve added 3 new NPC Towns to the world of Atlas: the Valderkal stronghold of Teronkal, the tribal settlement of Ayeli-Odalvi, and the reclaimed Shen capital of Shen Zhengyi. Redspire is also now an official NPC Town, complete with merchants and fast travel. In addition, nearly all the existing NPC Towns you remember have gotten a facelift - most notably, the 3 NPC “capitals” that have received major expansions - Telaria, Eastwind, and Port Qi’Shen.

New Main Story QuestlinesAs we enter Atlas’ first major story chapter, War of Athera, the major world civilizations are already entrenched in a 3-way war. Players will get to choose 1 of the NPC factions and embark on a unique story questline for them that advances the story of the war. You’ll also have the option to reset your alliance (for a price), and experience all 3 sides of the main story. Every few months, we’ll be releasing new chapters to the 3 War of Athera questlines, as the true consequences of the war begin to have real changes on the world!

New DungeonsSo far, we’ve finished adding 2 new dungeons to Atlas - the Shen Catacombs in Port Qi’Shen, and the Fall of Devshire in the Wraithhold. We can’t share too much about them without spoiling the surprise, but we will say that they’re both significantly more difficult than the 2 existing dungeons - so gear up, and prepare for some exciting new challenges!

LeaderboardsWith so many different things to do on Atlas, we finally have a way for players to track worldwide scores! With Leaderboards for everything from skills to combat to Nation achievements, there are now more ways to compete than ever - and you’ll be able to visit the website and see Atlas’ top scorers in every category.

Town LevelingBy doing everyday tasks in (or near) your town borders, you will now gain Town Experience, and ultimately level up your towns! There are dozens of categories for town leveling, including mining, building, slaying, fishing, and cooking. Leveling up your towns will unlock unique perks such as passive bonuses, Landmarks, and Citizens. The leveling system itself is complete - the perks are being fine-tuned and tested, and should be ready very soon!

Tomes reworkWe’ve updated how 2 of our donator items work: Tomes of Wisdom, which allow you to add custom lore to an item, and Tomes of Knowledge, which allow you to add stat tracking. Both now have their own custom, easy-to-use GUI for players to claim and use them!

Cartography updateAdded a highly-requested quality-of-life update: most quests will now automatically add the coordinates of the objective as a Custom Waypoint on your Cartographer’s Compass!

New MythicMobs & World BossesWe’ve more than doubled our existing pool of custom monsters that spawn throughout Atlas, which has more than doubled the Mythic Loot types that can be gathered and sold! There are also a couple new rare World Bosses that players may stumble upon deep in the wilds...

Fast Travel updatesSome more highly-requested QoL updates: the fast travel system not only utilizes the Shops GUI now (so no more misclicking destinations in chat), but has also been made more robust and interconnected. There are now 75 different fast travel routes across Atlas!

We’ve finished quite a few other things since October, but those are the major highlights for now. As for what’s been in the works this past week:

New MapAs stated in our community update post, we’re working on a custom plugin to help us generate our hand-built ocean elements onto the new map (in the absence of 1.13 WorldPainter.) The build team has been busy adding to our pool of assets, while the new map gets prepped for cave and ocean generation.

World RegenerationThe massive world regen system is nearly finished, but this week has taken a backseat to the more-pressing map generation project. Obviously once we have our new map, we’ll be able to truly start testing this system in its entirety.

BuildsLots of fine-tuning and detailing to our NPC towns and quest builds (as well as a couple full remodels!)

Luxury ItemsYou probably saw the screenshot in Discord, but we’ve been testing our new Luxury Items this week - Fine Art, Luxury Maps, and Furniture. We’ve added the Shops and Nations integration these have needed to work, and now just need to finalize some mechanical issues to get these fully ready.

Mob & Dungeon BalancingWe’ve spent a lot of time dying to our own dungeons and monster creations - for science! We want these new features to be challenging without being impossible or (too) annoying, which is obviously a fine line to walk. So the number-crunching and experimenting continues!

Magic reworkThe Magic system has gone through several iterations since October, but we’ve finally found a solution we think will work best. We want to do a bit more testing on some of our new spells before going really in-depth with the new details - but one major new feature we think you’ll be excited for is the addition of General Spells, which can be cast by any magic-user, regardless of their chosen class.

Nations & Sieges system balancingLots of discussion on the fine points of the Nation and Siege systems, as we begin introducing the new mechanics of Town Leveling and the Siege Exemption Limit. More details on those fine points to come, once we’ve had a chance to test them further ourselves.

CookingOur new custom skill, Cooking, has recently finished development and begun testing! Combined with Agriculture, we’re excited to see players discover all the new foods these will bring to Atlas.

And that was this past week in Atlas! Stay tuned every Sunday for new update posts on our development progress, as well as additional teasers and sneak-peeks as we approach launch!

New MapOn land, we’ve created new world objects and formations for nearly every biome! Under the oceans, there are now several different layers of custom watery environments, from shallow-water coral reefs, to deepwater eddies that will suck your boat down to the bottom of the ocean if you’re not careful!

Angling updatesSince we’ve branched off from the original MoreFish plugin and custom-coded our own version (Angling), we updated our version to 1.13 and tested this week. Previous quests involving fish that were bugged (like the Fishmonger questline in Telaria) have been fully fixed.

Tomes updatesAdded “Master Smith” NPCs to all major cities, where players can redeem purchased Tomes and apply them to items.

Cartography integrationsAsking a guard for directions in an NPC town will now automatically add that location as a custom waypoint on your Cartographer’s Compass. Similarly, a large number of quests will now automatically add their objective location as a custom waypoint to your compass.

Quest reworksWith the story of the world moving forward, several quests became outdated, irrelevant, or simply didn’t work anymore. Went back through and rewrote/re-coded these, and added the aforementioned Cartography waypoint integration.

Luxury FurnitureAdded the Luxury Furniture store to Nauru, where players will be able to view and purchase all available unique furniture pieces.

Build updatesContinuing updates and reworks to several major NPC towns, as well as hand-building ocean assets to generate throughout the world (shipwrecks, ruins, coral, etc.)

Cooking updatesTested the current iteration of the new plugin extensively, and have begun some UI updates to make it easier to use for players.

Map workContinuing our development of the new map, we’ve added new objects to every biome, new oceans, and are preparing to do our plugin witchcraft to generate the world’s caves, coral, and other exciting new features!

Citizens & LandmarksCode for player town Citizen NPCs and Landmarks has been finished, and intensive testing has begun.

Magic testingThe overhaul to the magic system has taken a lot of testing and fine-tuning, so we’ve been hard at work (among other things) building and balancing our new spells.

AgricultureBeginning to add new Agriculture crops to the Food Merchants of the world, and continued bug testing.

NPC TownsFinishing build reworks to NPC Towns, as well as populating them with NPCs, merchants, fast travel, etc.

DungeonsA DXL-side bug has slowed down our dungeon testing this week, but hoping to get a fix from the developer soon so we can properly test and balance our new dungeons.

MythicMobsCreating new skillsets for our new mobs, balancing, and testing.

Assorted updatesA lot of progress on the code side of things - API updates for Sieges, Town Perks development, Bookshelves updates, etc.

Apologies for the lack of dev updates these last few Sundays, but it’s been a hectic and productive couple weeks now that launch is just around the corner! To sum up the highlights:

New MapThe map itself has been finished, and we’ve finally finished the extensive process of transferring over all the NPC towns and world builds. The build team has been hard at work doing a final pass over everything, smoothing edges, detailing, and preparing the final version of the world itself! All the separate pieces being worked on these past few months have finally come together, and the world looks better than ever!

World RegenThe system is finished! We’ll be testing it extensively over the next couple weeks (at a significantly faster rate of reclamation than normal, to make sure we’re able to see and test the long-term effects.)

MagicLots of great progress on Magic: our new spells have been created and tested, and are currently undergoing balancing. We’ve created a brand new Magic tutorial quest that gives players the opportunity to test out spells from every school before making their choice! And we’ve created the mechanic to allow players to reset their Magic school (for a cost)!

Quest mechanicsLike the Magic school reset, we’ve created a mechanic for players to reset their main quest progress (for a cost), and choose a new NPC faction to align with! In doing so, players will be able to change which NPC capital their free Nauru fast travel goes, as well as experience a new faction’s main questline.

New MobsAlmost every region on Atlas is getting 1 or more new randomly spawning Mythic Mobs, which will drop new types of unique loot that can be sold in NPC towns. We’ve been creating and editing new skillsets, and are currently balancing and finalizing all our new mobs - including 2 world bosses! (1 brand new one, and an old favorite that’s evolved into one…)

DungeonsNow that we’ve finished building and coding them, we’re in the final stages of playtesting and balancing our 2 new dungeons, which will be our hardest yet by far: TheShen Catacombs and The Fall of Devshire!

Nations updatesWith all the individual new pieces of the Nations system finished - Town Halls, Physical Coffers, Town Leveling, etc. - we’re now in the process of testing everything together and making sure the system itself is cohesive, player-friendly, and easy to use!

Well, it’s certainly been the busiest week we’ve had in awhile, and we hope that (despite the lag and occasional crashes) you’re all enjoying the server so far! We appreciate you guys continuing to report bugs as you find them - the best way to make your bug report seen is to post it to the Bugs & Glitches section of the forums.

So to give the quick rundown, we’ll split this up into Fixed Bugs and Known Bugs that we’re still working on:

Bugs We’ve Fixed:

Players should no longer inexplicably have insane amounts of XP levels, or negative XP levels. We hope this also fixed the missing XP bar issue.

Archmage Rholla will now properly progress players to the next Magic class questline in Nauru, instead of ending the conversation. (If you had this bug before, PM an admin, as they will need to manually reset it for you.)

Wands will no longer open up spell inventories by right-clicking (this was creating some backend problems, and with wands only having 1 spell right now, this feature is unnecessary.)

The spells Magic Missile, Firebolt, and Death Bolt should now properly deal damage to mobs.

The quest “Have You Seen My Son?” in Port Qi’Shen now gives the proper reward.

Naurulian Guards now give the correct waypoint for the Cooking Skill Trainer. (If you had this waypoint before, delete it from your compass and ask a Guard again to receive the correct one.)

The missing sign in the quest “Lantern Graffiti” in Port Qi’Shen has been re-added.

The quest “Once Upon a Tome…” in Yukrovia will now trigger the proper event on the second floor of the library.

The Smeltery tutorial quest now properly gives you a clock in the beginning, and the dialogue has been updated to reflect Tin and Copper now having a 1-minute smelt time.

The final boss of the Corruption of Kairos dungeon should no longer create large amounts of lag, as its particle effects have been removed.

Bugs We’re Aware Of and Currently Fixing:

THE LAG - We are working around the clock on improving server optimization and fixing both our TPS issues and our occasional crashes. We’re already much improved from yesterday, but obviously we still have more work to do in fixing and updating a few other elements contributing to this.

The magic training quest at Archmage Rholla that requires you to have a clear inventory - we are working on a small mechanic that will “store” your inventory and then return it to you upon leaving the quest area, so that this is not so hard to complete.

Fishing prices - While we did indeed reduce the previously too-high price of selling fish, it seems that fish shops are not properly paying for the higher-rarity fish that they should (Epic and Legendary fish should still sell for quite a bit of gems.) So we recommend holding off on mass-selling fish until we’ve had a chance to dig in to what’s happening with the prices.

Casting the Raise Steed spell in Nauru (and certain other NPC towns) causes the caster to glitch out. This is a WorldGuard issue that we’re fixing, but in the meantime we suggest walking a ways out of NPC town territory before using this spell.

The “See Tax Info” and “See Nation Info” buttons on the Town Steward GUI will work eventually, but is currently a lower priority item.

TP scrolls have been temporarily disabled, as they were teleporting players beneath the world and killing them.

The Brewery skill quest does not work - however the skill itself still works (to some degree)!

The elemental spell Thunderstrike does not work in Nauru - however it should work in Athera. Likely a permissions bug that we’re tracking down.

“The Prototype” quest in Riverguard - the NPC in Telaria won’t accept the Grappling Hook if it is damaged. Not intentional, but will need to fix manually if any player is trying to beat it with a Grappling Hook at less than 100% durability, until we are able to fix this.

A large amount of battlegrounds NPCs have been temporarily disabled, to help reduce the lag - so if you come upon a battlefield full of soldiers just standing around, that’s why! Though they should still properly attack players who are doing the quests tied to them.

If you’ve found a bug that you don’t see listed here, please post it in the Bugs & Glitches section of the forums!

When the Ambassador was spawned in for the first time, it was not being recognized in the system as a Citizen. Meaning it would spawn and be visible for those that were online at the time, but relogging would make it disappear and you could not interact with it. This has been fixed.

To place an Ambassador in your town for the first time, you now require the TOWN_MANAGEMENT permission.

When moving the Ambassador, similar to the Town Steward, the Ambassador spawner item has to follow some special rules, it was not. This has been rectified.

The Home-Cooked Meals perk made the Iron Stomach and Well Fed perks entirely useless because it would always set your hunger to 9.5 bars. This no longer occurs, if you have this perk active and you have a full hunger bar, then your hunger bar will go down to 9.5 bars.

Nations Fixes / Updates

The Town Spawn system will now preference your personal spawn over the default town spawn

Akin to the stone pressure plates, stone buttons now follow the same rules when placed on colored concrete

Known Issues

There is a peculiar issue where if you die with Citizens in your render distance and you look in the direction of a Citizen after respawning, the server will kick you off. Still looking into this one.

Note: This update will go into effect at 12 AM CDT 8/26/2019

"The great thing about multitasking is that several things can go wrong at once" - Andrew B. Sweger

Any block with an Inventory (chests, furnaces, etc.) within town borders cannot be opened by a player unless that player is either
a. Part of the same nation
b. Is in a nation that is allied to the nation

"The great thing about multitasking is that several things can go wrong at once" - Andrew B. Sweger

The system has it's own built in tutorial that guides you through the setup process

Shop Chests can be obtained via the "Trademaster" Citizen

Grand Auction

A global marketplace system

Putting items up for sale has a 10% of the sale price cost associated with it

Items take time to reach the various Auctioneers depending on the location where the item was posted

The system also includes a new "Player Advertisements" system where you can put up various advertisements

Access to this system is obtained by unlocking and placing the "Auctioneer" Citizen

The Auctioneers that are supposed to be at the 3 Capitals have not yet arrived unfortunately. However they will be arriving shortly, so stay tuned!

New Citizens

Trademaster

Gives you access to the World Trades via the Ledger or the NPC itself

Allows you to buy shop chests and World Trade Ledgers

Unlocked at Town level 20

Auctioneer

Allows access to the Grand Auction

Unlocked at Town level 25

Other Misc. Fixes / Changes

Previously if you were not part of the nation that the town belonged to, you could not interact with any Citizens of that town. This has now been slightly modified, Trademasters, Auctioneers and Bankers are accessible to all players in any town regardless of their town affiliation

The "Move Citizen" icon in the various Citizen GUIs only shows up if you have the the "TOWN_MANAGEMENT" permission in the nation

Did some more optimizations on the Obelisk Shard warps, along with some clearer messages on whether or not you are set to warp

NPCs that are supposed to be damageable should be damageable again

"The great thing about multitasking is that several things can go wrong at once" - Andrew B. Sweger

About Us

Atlas is an immersive MC experience like no other. A custom nation creation system, mixed with the rich backstory and quest progression of an MMORPG, make for a world that MC players of any style can enjoy!